Peccadilloes in Nippon and in Nipponese with a Quixotic Perspective. Coming at you from Yokohama, near Tokyo.

September 10, 2006

Shinto stuff (media dump)

The shinto festivals have been everywhere this weekend. Today, the oni-mask boys were drumming it up in front of the fish mongers' place. They finished by marching inside, no doubt to bring prosperity. As they stopped and ocha and juice was offered to them by the wife of the monger, I realized that the scene was an interesting reflection of Christmas carols.--Sitting under a waterfall is called Misogi(禊). It's quite a rush. I wanna do it around here.--I went to the giant shrine in Kashima (Yutoku I believe?) yesterday. As I was exploring around, I found an old path, littered with fallen trees to suggest it wasn't the way to go. Being tall, I equiped myself with a branch to swing back and forth to preemptively knock spider webs out of the way. But I was stuborn as usual, so I didn't turn back until the warthogs. I was pretty suprised when I saw them. Most wild animals leave long before you get there, but I somehow got an entire family of warthogs in view. Knowing how dangerous they can be I did the only thing I could: I started to wip my spider web branch back and forth as fast as I could, making a swishing sound. It payed off, perhaps because as I suspect, animals instinctively are afraid of that sound. Or it may only be domestic animals that fear the sound and I only got lucky. In any case, I am not gored and here to tell the tale. And the 山が生きている.

Many pictures after you expand the post.--These should have been posted last photodump--A couple more movies: